A household survey was carried out in Kampong Cham (Chamkar Leu and Tbaung Khmom Districts) and Battambang (Sampov Loun, Kamreang and Phnom Proek Districts) in 2003-04 to determine:
farming systems practised;
impact of upland crops on farm incomes and the utilization of farm resources;
potential for improving both yield and productivity of upland crops; and
constraints to crop production.

Initially, a pilot survey was carried out with 16 households in Kampong Cham and 20 in Battambang to test the methodology. The main survey involved a total of 162 households (70 in Kampong Cham and 92 in Battambang). These surveys have been completed and the data entered onto spreadsheets for analysis.
In Australia, 131 farmers and advisers in the Moree, Inverell, Narrabri and Gunnedah districts were surveyed revealing the main reasons farmers have for not growing chickpeas and faba beans. These are the risk of disease, the cost and hassle of fungicides and concern over broadleaf weed management. A major limit to faba beans was the lack of a suitable variety and price that are too low and variable. The price of chickpeas was considered too variable. The main concern for canola was the lack of suitable harvest equipment followed by concern over broadleaf weed management. The respondents consistently gave a low ranking (i.e. not a limiting factor) to agronomic information and being convinced about the benefits of these alternative crops.
Farming systems research priorities for the field experiment program for upland crops in Cambodia in 2003-04 were drawn from Agro-Ecosystem Analyses, consultation with Office of Agricultural Extension, Provincial Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and CARDI. Crop production issues identified were
a lack of suitable varieties of upland crops;
susceptibility of local varieties to insect pests and diseases;
lack of nodulation or poor nodulation of legumes with rhizobia;
excessive and possibly unnecessary tillage on the friable/erodible upland soils.

The field experimental program in Cambodia in the 2004 wet season has involved a total of 35 experiments: 16 variety trials; six experiments to evaluate resistance to major pests; nine rhizobium inoculation experiments and four reduced tillage experiments.
In June 2004, members of the Cambodian and Australian project team visited Thailand to acquire germplasm of soybean, corn, sesame, peanut, mungbeans and cowpeas for evaluation in Cambodia. The team also inspected tillage research rhizobium inoculation techniques.
The project is developing simple diagnostic tools for farmers and advisers in Cambodia. These can be as simple as push probes to estimate the depth of wet soil, pH kits, rain gauges and germination tests of seed kept for sowing. Photographic records are being compiled for the identification of insect pests and diseases. At the Australian end of the project, work commenced on a CropChoice spread sheet decision aid. The CropChoice spread sheet has been developed to combine paddock data, scientific knowledge and economic and marketing information to assist the farmer in crop choice decisions.
Reduced or zero-tillage has the potential to improve soil water storage and reduce erosion on upland soils in Cambodia. Early results of tillage experiments have shown that yields of upland crops planted by zero-till are equal to yields after conventional cultivation. Reduced cultivation has the potential to reduce the risk of sowing upland crops at the break of the wet season. Experiments are planned for 2005 to determine if the risks of planting early can be reduced by practices aimed at increasing soil moisture storage.
A benchmarking (crop check) study was carried out in northern NSW in 2003. The results are being used to aid growers in decision making. For chickpea crops in 2003, the variables most associated with yield were found to be plant available water; stubble cover and rhizobium nodulation. Frosts occurring late in the season were also particularly detrimental to some crops. Benchmarking in the farmer's paddocks showed yield loss from delayed seeding to be 30 kg/ha/day or over 600 kg/ha/month. Thus delayed sowing for one month would cost the grower $160/ha if chickpeas were worth $270/t. A draft crop-check protocol has been prepared for soybeans under Cambodian conditions and is being evaluated in 2004.
The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Agfact publication series is being used as a model for developing technical information packages for the 6 focus crops in Cambodia (corn, soybean, mungbean, cowpea, peanut and sesame). A draft mungbean Agfact has been circulated to project team for input.

During 2004-05, farmer workshops were conducted in Battambang and Kampong Cham, Cambodia, to document farmers' knowledge of and problems with growing upland crops. The first workshops in July-August 2004 covered the broader issues and problems growing upland crops. The second series of workshops in February-March 2005 dealt with more specific questions about the crops to be grown in 2005, area sown, why the crop was chosen, seeding rates, row spacing, fertiliser and pesticide use. The workshops in July-August 2005 concentrated on farmers' knowledge of weeds, diseases and insect pests of upland crops and the control measures used. Farmers were shown photographs of insects (both beneficial and pest). In Battambang, farmers did not use any botanical insecticides to control insect pests. They used insecticides (Folidol, Phosdrine) on mungbean but no chemicals were used on soybean, cowpea, maize or peanut. Farmers are aware of the biology of some insects for example the moth produces larva which cause damage. However, they are not aware of beneficial insects such as the predatory shield bug, black beetle predator and parasitic fly (Tachinid) which were considered as insect pests by the farmers.

A series of 18 farmer focus group meetings was conducted in north-western NSW, Australia during April-May 2005. The purpose of the meetings was to determine the barriers to adoption of no-tillage and conservation farming practices. The meetings were held in 9 agronomy districts and involved approximately 130 farmers. Two groups were convened in each district - those who have adopted no-till and those who are conventional or only partly on the way to adoption of conservation farming practices. The study found that the most serious barriers are occurring in the mixed farming zone. These include socio-economic issues (cost of conversion, farmer age, reluctance to change, reluctance to use herbicides, farm size etc). People who are getting towards retirement are not wanting to make a major investment. The mixed farming zone also tends to coincide with more difficult soils - red brown earths and lighter soils that bring problems with weed control, herbicide efficacy, dust etc. It is also difficult to move to no-tillage in a mixed farming format eg where there is a lucerne-crop lay farming approach. Also the need to be flexible was raised in many districts. The results of the focus groups will provide the themes for a workshop/conference to be held at Tamworth in March 2006 to develop clear directions for education, training, extension and research.

The field experimental program in Cambodia in 2004 included 11 experiments in early wet season and 35 experiments in the main wet season. The 2005 wet season has involved a total of 35 experiments: 16 variety trials; 6 experiments to evaluate resistance to major pests; 9 rhizobium inoculation experiments and 4 reduced tillage experiments.
- Yields of mungbean varieties ranged from 650-1440 kg/ha, cowpea from 320-602 kg/ha, soybean from 150-760 kg/ha and maize from 1627-4267 kg/ha. The local mungbean varieties were poor in comparison with those from AVRDC and Thailand. In contrast, the local varieties of cowpea performed best. The best maize varieties were from Mexico and the local composite variety was amongst the lowest yielding.
- The response to rhizobium inoculation in mungbean was 6% and for soybean, 20%. The yields of inoculated treatments were not significantly different from N application. Inoculation could be worth $8US/ha for mungbean and $35US/ha for soybean. The cost of inoculation would be less than $5US/ha therefore inoculation could be attractive for soybeans even if the inoculum were to be imported.
- Zero-tillage compared to disc and chisel ploughing produced equivalent yields for maize and higher yields for soybeans thus demonstrating that tillage is not required on the friable vertosol and ferrosol soils in upland cropping areas. Lack of ground cover however is an important problem.

Socio-economic surveys carried out in Cambodia 2003 and 2004 are being prepared for publication. The surveys have provided data on: profiles of farm family households; land area, capital and borrowings; and crop sequences, yields and prices. Farm family household heads are nearly all male with an average age in the mid 40s and with 3-4 years schooling. Family size is 5-6 persons, 2-3 dependents with very low opportunity for off-farm work. Farmers considered the main reasons for not growing crops to be lack of knowledge, low profitability, land/soil constraints, lack of labour/equipment, agronomic and climate risk.

In Cambodia, some farmers have had two successive crop failures during the EWS 2005 due to drought and risk of sowing appears to be a major issue that requires further climate and economic analysis. The risk could be reduced by reducing the amount of ploughing and increasing the amount of ground cover but this is not likely to be enough to prevent crop failure during very dry years. Lack of crop residues and ground cover at the beginning of the wet season is a problem. Including upland rice in the rotation could be an alternative to spreading rice straw as a way of increasing ground cover. The project is focussed on developing and validating sowing rules and moisture retention strategies particularly for the EWS.

In Cambodia, we are using DSSAT (Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer - Jones et al. 1998) which is a software package containing crop growth models, database management, and analysis programs. DSSAT uses weather data/other inputs to simulate crop growth for single crops or crop sequences, and evaluate crop management practices at a site. We are currently running two preliminary analyses (a) maize management - SUWAN1 variety (open pollinated) with early wet season planting options (March 1, March 15, April 1) and (b) nitrogen fertilizer management - what is the payoff for N applications to maize crops?

In northern NSW, chickpea paddocks were benchmarked in 2002, 2003 and 2004 and combined with data from the Pulse Australia Chickpea Competition to provide records from a total of 120 paddocks: 25 in 2002, 40 in 2003 and 55 in 2004. The growers provided information on rainfall, previous rotations, tillage practices, fallow management, soil test data, fertiliser use, sowing details, weed, disease and insect management history data. The results show that farmers in northern NSW are now growing a wide diversity of crops compared to 20 years ago. The most significant change is the overall decline in winter cereals from 65 to 52%. Bread wheat has declined from 64 to 39%, barley increased from 1 to 7% and durum wheat from 0 to 6%. Pulse crops have increased from 0 to 11%, canola is now a rotation option and dryland cotton is also an option. Eighty eight percent of the chickpea crops were sown into no-tillage fallows, 9% were minimum tillage and 3% full cultivation.

Over the three years, chickpea yield averaged 1.81 t/ha (1.25 in 2002, 1.87 in 2003 and 1.97 in 2004). The maximum yield recorded for a commercial crop was 3 t/ha (3.5 t/ha has been obtained under favourable experimental conditions at Tamworth). Water-use efficiency averaged 10.95 kg/mm (9.5 in 2002, 11.6 in 2003 and 11.1 in 2004). Some growers achieved 20 kg/mm and some as little as 5 kg/mm. The maximum yield achievable at 20 mm/kg would have been 5 t/ha. The wide range in WUE indicates considerable potential for the identification and elimination of yield-limiting factors.

In the 2003 chickpea survey, we found that plant-available water, stubble cover and rhizobium nodulation were associated with chickpea yield. The nodulation issue has been taken up by Ms Nataslie Elias in PhD studies supported by GRDC. Chickpea nodulation was found to be sub-optimal and this may be inhibiting nitrogen fixation and yield. Field studies commenced in 2004 to obtain a quantitative and qualitative assessment of rhizobial populations in chickpea cropping soils in the north-west.

The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries Agfact publication series is being used as a model for developing technical information packages for the 6 focus crops in Cambodia (corn, soybean, mungbean, cowpea, peanut and sesame). A draft mungbean Agfact has been circulated to project team members for comment. Stephanie Belfield was assisted in the preparation of extension material by Australian volunteers Ms Kelly Baker and Mr Wes Leedham who were located at CARDI between June 2 and August 14 2005. They collected insect pest and weed specimens from upland crops (maize, peanut, cowpea, soybean, sesame and mungbean) in Kampong Cham province. They assisted with identification of specimens and photographed the pests, weeds and diseases at a macro scale for inclusion in extension material, eg. Agfacts or "moto" guide.

A workshop on "Farming Systems for Crop Diversification in Cambodia", was held at CARDI from 15-17 February 2005. The workshop was organised by CARDI and sponsored by the Crawford Fund and ACIAR. The workshop was attended by 42 delegates from CARDI and from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), Provincial Departments of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, (PDAFF) in Kampong Cham and Battambang. Sixteen of the delegates were extension staff based in the Provinces. The workshop program was as follows:
- Concept of farming systems (Bob Martin);
- Principles of conservation farming systems; Tillage systems and crop establishment; Weed management; Work safety (Jeff Esdaile);
- Current upland farming systems practice in Cambodia (Som Bunna);
- Demonstration of the rapid soil nitrate test (Bob Martin);
- Rhizobium inoculation on leguminous crop (Natalie Elias).
- Economics (Fiona Scott): Gross margin definitions and examples; Gross margin practical exercise; Partial budgets; Cash flow budgets, introduction and objectives; Whole farm budget overview.

In July 2005, members of the Cambodian and Australian project team visited Vietnam and recommendations from the visit were as follows:
1. Short duration (90 days or less) varieties of upland crops from Vietnam should be evaluated in Cambodia as a strategy to reduce the risk of crop failure due to climate variability and drought. Thus strategy should also be evaluated for NW NSW to make better use of summer rainfall between November and February. Short duration varieties of maize, soybean, peanut and sesame have been obtained for testing.
2. There is a need to develop IPM for management of weeds, disease and insect pests in upland cropping systems in both Vietnam and Cambodia. In Vietnam, farmers are applying insecticide as frequently as every 10 days. Options include the use of trap crops (eg sunflower) for insect pests such as Helicoverpa and Spodoptera. Other options for IPM include inter-cropping, for example with lemon basil or marigold.
3. As in Cambodia, the Vietnamese upland farmer ploughs the land with a disc plough and removes and/or burns crop residues before planting the next crop. This practice causes soil degradation and reduces water-use efficiency. There is a need to investigate and promote the value of reduced/zero-tillage, mulching crop residues and of growing green manure crops to improve soil sustainability, reduce the risk of crop failure and to improve the income security of the farmers.
4. Inter cropping and relay cropping of upland crops should be investigated in Cambodia: (a) as part of an IPM strategy (eg sunflower/peanut, lemon basil, marigold), (b) to improve soil structure, fertility and reduce soil erosion (eg mungbean/cassava), (c) to increase crop frequency and reduce risk of crop failure (eg relay cropping mungbean into maize), (d) in terms of income security.

ASEM/2000/109 enjoys a very productive relationship between Cambodian and Australian team members. The teams possess a close sense of collaboration while maintaining a professional approach to their activities. Such an atmosphere bodes well for the final outputs and potential for making an impact on both Australian and Cambodian farming systems.

A series of workshops conducted early in the Project period resulted in identification of the constraints to the adoption of diversified farming systems in both Australia and Cambodia. Australian farmers took this opportunity of discussing their constraints within a wider audience, culminating in a national conference co sponsored by GDRC, UNE and the Namoi CMA. Some farmers also formed working groups to further evaluate the potential for change through discussion between adopters and non adopters of zero tillage technologies. Crop check software was developed to assist farmers calculate crop management options.

In Cambodia, the results of the farmer meetings and workshops helped design a program of field research. These trials were mostly installed in farmers fields with the assistance of farmers, Provincial agricultural technicians and extensionists plus researchers from CARDI. A total of 153 on-farm experiments and demonstrations were conducted between 2004-2006 and included experiments on variety evaluation (43), insect pests and disease (19), reduced tillage (22), agronomy and farming systems (69). In addition, simple diagnostic and analysis tools were drafted in the form of guides to weed and insect pests of upland crops. Rhizobium inoculation techniques and rapid soil nitrate tests were demonstrated for use. A crop check type system is under development for Cambodia which is adapted to target crops and socio-economic needs.

Technical information generated from the research conducted in Cambodia resulted in "best bet" technologies being developed for the upland cropping systems. Draft field crop manuals for soybean, maize, mungbean, peanut, cowpea and sesame were prepared in collaboration with extension staff; a DSSAT crop simulation model being used to predict nitrogen fertility and other factors affecting crops. A 60 page book of gross margin analysis and general information for these 6 crops is also drafted.

Potential impacts the research on upland crops in Cambodia are huge considering that yield increases are likely and ASEM/2000/109 is the largest of a small number of projects working on upland crop issues in the country. It is too early to evaluate the effect the drafted technologies have influenced practices to date, but farmers at field days during the review period displayed considerable interest in the trials and individual farmers had tried parts of the technology "packages" on their own farms. Measurements may be possible at the end of year 4 to evaluate some economic benefits of the Project.

Adoption of the Project recommended zero till practices carries with it significant environmental advantages for Cambodia as will rhizobium inoculation of legumes and the use of IPM practices. These technologies require some refinement and possible establishment of inoculation supply chains plus training.

As per the review recommendation in June 2006, the project was extended from 30 June 2007 to 31 December 2007. This enabled a full field program to be conducted in Cambodia in the wet season in 2007. The project extension included an expansion of the demonstration of Improved Technology Practices (ITPs) to additional districts in collaboration with provincial extension staff as well as non-government organisations (CARE and the Maddox Jolie Pitt foundation (MJP). In February 2007, ASEM/2000/109 provided training to Provincial Department of Agriculture (PDA) staff as well as staff from CARE and MJP. The purpose of the training, held in Kampong Cham and Battambang, was to enable extension collaborators to independently implement on-farm demonstrations for improved technologies for the production of upland crops. Overall, only 27 of the 48 demonstrations in the early wet season were successful with the failures put down to drought.

It is planned to continue involvement with PDA, CARE and MJP in the roll-out of on-farm demonstrations. They will need more hands-on training for implementing the demonstrations and for the recording of data and analysis of the results. Generally farmers have been happy with the demonstrations and have learned a lot. However, they are not yet ready to abandon their current techniques. Rhizobium, zero-tillage and new varieties have attracted the most interest. The mungbean variety ATF3944 introduced by the project has attracted a lot of interest with farmers wishing to keep the seed. A very high proportion of women have attended workshops and field days.

A highlight for the year was the publication of the paper "Contemporary practices, constraints and opportunities for non-rice crops in Cambodia" in the Cambodian Journal of Agriculture. The authors were: Robert Farquharson, Chea Sareth, Chapho Somrangchittra, Richard Bell, Seng Vang, Wendy Vance, Robert Martin, Ung Sopheap and Fiona Scott. The results pointed to the need for focused research on new technologies and management as they affect crop yields and profits, and for increased extension to Cambodian farmers of this information. As a follow-up, a pilot village scale socioeconomic study was conducted in 2007 to determine the potential impacts of adoption of the new technologies developed by the project.

The project has shown that tillage is not necessary for the establishment of upland crops and that mulching or the retention of crop residues can significantly increase crop yields. However, Cambodian farmers are committed to full cultivation and do not have access to no-tillage planters. Many Cambodian farmers have access to power-tillers and Mr Jeff Esdaile has assisted the project by constructing a prototype no-till planter with Chinese units fitted to a Siam Kubota power-tiller. This work will continue under Jeff's new project, CIM/2007/027.

In the last two seasons in northern NSW, four experiments have been completed to compare seven crop species; sorghum, sunflower, soybean, maize, mungbean, cowpea and sesame. Three varieties of each crop type were sown to obtain a range of maturities (quick, medium and long season). Mungbeans and sunflowers were the most profitable alternatives to sorghum. Cowpeas and sesame have small niche markets with strict quality requirements and this limits the current prospects for significant expansion. Experiments were also conducted at three sites to evaluate the interaction between early/late sowing and maturity class for a wider selection of maize and sunflower varieties. In collaboration with, Queensland DPI, a range of peanut lines were evaluated at Tamworth for the second year.

The project has a commitment to the publication of a range of extension material for Cambodia. This includes Field Crop Manuals (FCMs) for maize, soybean, peanut, mungbean and sesame; a gross margin handbook; a manual of Improved Technological Practices (ITP) for Upland Crops; and Field Guides for weeds and insect pests. These publications are to be produced in English and Khmer. The English versions of the Maize FCM, the ITP manual and the weed Field Guide are being published by NSW DPI in time for a National October conference on upland crops at CARDI to be held in October.

In collaboration with the Crawford Fund, a scientific writing course was provided at CARDI in June to assist 10 researchers in the preparation of scientific papers arising from the project. It is intended that these papers will be presented at the conference and published in a special issue of the Cambodian Journal of Agriculture. In Australia, work has continued on a book of 12 farm family case studies of adoption of no-tillage and conservation farming practices. It is anticipated that the book will go to press by December 2007.